This photo of a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter being tested in a wind tunnel comes from the archives of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the national aeronautics and space research centre of Germany. It doesn’t feel like a photo from 1940. This facility actually looks from the future.
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I haven’t had an original Macintosh on my desk in years, but I always thought about buying a used one. But now that I’ve seen this LEGO version, I think I’d rather have one of these.
Creative artists Jason Kinsella and Charlotte Bakken fabricated this awesome scale model of the original Apple Macintosh, and captured the build in this neat stop-motion video clip:
The best part of the design is that it’s actually got a slot in the side so they can set an iPad inside of it to serve as the display. With a properly jailbroken device, they could probably even run a Macintosh emulator on it to complete the effect. Just don’t try and cram a floppy disk in its drive slot.
[via Fast Co. Design]
A couple of years ago Steven Lefcourt had a go at making realistic Pokémon. He ended up making creepy creatures, but they’re not nearly as scary and Kaiju-like as Yuuki Morita’s versions. The freelance CG artist used 3D animation and modeling programs to portray the final forms of the original starter Pokémon.
Check out the abs on Charizard. Blastoise looks equally mad…
…and Venusaur is daring you to choose someone else over him:
It’s hard to believe any of these three would accept orders from a kid, let alone willingly confine themselves in a Pokéball.
[Yuuki Morita via Geekologie]
Flyonix specializes in aerial video and photography. The studio recently put their knowledge of drones for a geeky pursuit. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Flyonix set out to build and fly a life-size TARDIS. And they succeeded. Somewhat.
Flyonix built a custom rig with 12 propellers. Judging from their brief making-of videos – which you can watch here and here – they made the TARDIS model itself out of styrofoam. With everything in place, all that was left was to let her fly…
Oh, the humanity! Unfortunately it seems like her chameleon circuit wasn’t the only thing that needed fixing. According to Metro, a battery shortage was responsible for the crash. If you’re an aspiring Time Lord, you can see more in-progress photos of Flyonix’ ill-fated TARDIS on the studio’s Facebook page.
Imagine Slowpoke starting a ColorWare franchise and you get the concept behind Lëkki. The French gadget shop sells and repaints only old – but beloved – gadgets, such as the Motorola StarTAC 130. Their latest (?) offering is the Nintendo 64, a console even older than Motorola’s thousand-year old flip phone, but no less popular.
The console is available in four colorways and comes with a similarly colored controller and a copy of Super Mario 64, which is probably the best launch game of all time.
Lëkki sells the bundles for €120 (~$165 USD). Note that these refurbished consoles are PAL versions, so check if you have a compatible TV before you order.
[via Nintendo Life]
We’ve seen a couple of devices that let you take 360º videos or images with ease. However, going by their sample shots, the videos they take are significantly warped and blurry. Thomas Seidl and his Eye Mirror promise to let you take 360º videos in high definition. The privilege is going to cost you, but it just might be worth it.
The Eye Mirror is a lens add-on for pretty much any camera, from old point-and-shoots to DSLRS. It even has a special case for the insanely popular GoPro cameras. When paired with the GoPro Hero3 Black (and a custom firmware), you can Eye Mirror claims that you can shoot 3020 x 3020 360º videos at 15fps. In simple terms, the lens has a curved mirror at the top that reflects the surroundings in a ring.
All you have to do is attach the Eye Mirror lens to your camera and point the camera upwards. When you’re done, load the video to your PC to convert it into an interactive 360º video. So you go from that, to this:
Check out the company’s Kickstarter video below:
As implied in the video, you can share the interactive video online through Eye Mirror’s own video sharing site. The company will also be launching a separate viewer for people who own the Oculus Rift, though that software has its separate price tag. Speaking of which, pledge at least £120 (~$196 USD) on Kickstarter to get an Eye Mirror Lens. Check the reward tiers carefully because as I said the lens has different variants, so make sure the one you’re getting fits your camera.
You should also checkout the sample interactive videos on Eye Mirror’s website.
[via DVICE]
There are already plug-and-play third-party devices that let you play previous gen consoles or a PC using any of their controllers. For instance, you can use a Wiimote with your PS3 if you want. There’s no equivalent product for the PlayStation 4 just yet, but Marcos Mori de Siqueira of Softfactory is onto something here. He hacked a Dualshock 4 controller to send input from a mouse and keyboard to the PS 4.
I’m not even going to pretend that I fully understood what Marcos pulled off, but from what I grokked he used a microcontroller (plus two digital-to-analog converters for emulating the thumbsticks) to turn signals from his keyboard – in this case a Logitech Gameboard – and mouse into signals that the PS4 understands, sent via the Dualshock 4′s circuit board. All in all it took him about $50 (USD) of materials and a ton of solder to make the mod. Skip to about 1:55 in the video to see the mod in action.
Check out Marcos’ post on Softfactory for more details on his mod. Seeing as FPS and MMOs are still popular, I wonder why Sony and Microsoft don’t just add support for keyboards and mice on their consoles. They can probably earn extra from certifying third party hardware if they did that. It’ll make it way easier to search for content on their online stores too.
[via Hack A Day]
A few months ago we checked out an iPhone case that had several add-ons with different functions. The Pivothead SMART glasses have a very similar feature. The glasses have two microUSB ports – one at the end of each temple – from which you can attach small accessories called Smart Mods.
Unlike Google Glass, which has a heads up display to present detailed visual information, Pivothead SMART uses LED guides to display notifications and other basic data. That’s because the glasses are not really designed to be wearable personal computers like Glass. Instead, they’re taking on wearable cameras like the GoPro (though to some extent Google Glass falls into that bucket as well). For starters, it has a camera with an 8mp Sony CMOS sensor that can record 1080p video at 30fps. It has still, burst and time-lapse modes and auto, fixed and macro focus presets.
By default, the Pivothead SMART has 16GB storage and a battery good for an hour of continuous video recording. Here’s where the Smart Mods come in.
The Fuel Mod is a battery pack that adds more power to the glasses, equivalent to two more hours of continuous video recording. The Live Mod adds a MicroSD slot, but that’s actually just a bonus feature of the add-on. The main feature of Live Mod is that it allows the glasses to stream full HD video via Wi-Fi to a desktop computer, mobile device or to the web.
Even though Pivothead wants to be the next GoPro, its Air Mod has the potential to make it more versatile. The Air Mod add-on has the same features as the Live Mod add-on – i.e. streaming and a MicroSD slot – but it’s also much more than that. It’s actually a tiny, display-less Android device, with a dual-core 1.3GHz ARM A7 CPU, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and a host of sensors.
The idea is for developers to make apps that will run on the Air Mod, which will in turn enhance the functionality of the glasses. The video above showed a couple of concept apps for the Air Mod, such as a boarding pass scanner and an app that can analyze street signs.
Pledge at least $229 (USD) on Indiegogo to get a pair of Pivothead SMART glasses without any Smart Mods. You’ll need to pledge at least $409 to get the glasses and all three Smart Mods. The Smart Mods are also available as separate rewards. The Air Mod will – like any mobile device – live and die by its app ecosystem, but at least it’s an optional purchase. The glasses are still quite useful on their own.
Overall this seems to be a really promising device, but its makers need to find a way to explain its features to everyday consumers if they really want it to take off like GoPro cameras.
[Pivothead via The Droid Guy]
There’s a new Mega Man game! It’s a, uh, *cough* a board game. Wipe your tears, Blue Bomber faithful, board games can be a lot of fun! Plus Jasco Games’ officially licensed game will let you play not just as Rock, but as a Robot Master too! Yes! No? Oh come on. It’s all we have right now. Look at the bright side.
Because the game is still not done, its rules (pdf) are still being tweaked as well, but I think I get the basic premise of the game. You and up to 3 other players are all Mega Man. The goal is to be the first Mega Man to beat Dr. Wily. Standing in your way are challenges strewn about the board, as well as the Robot Masters. The kicker here is that the players also control one Robot Master each. When you reach the “Boss Battle” stage of the board, you (as Mega Man) will fight the Robot Master of the player to your left.
Hold B to charge your Mega Browser, then let go and pledge at least $60 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the Mega Man Board Game as a reward. Or we can all just play Rayman Legends. Damn Capcom, what the hell happened?
Earlier this year we learned about Gigs 2 Go, a concept for a credit card-sized pack of flash drives that you can “tear and share.” Inventors Kurt Rampton and BOLTgroup seem to have figured out how to mass produce the drives and are now raising funds on Kickstarter.
The final product is almost exactly the same as the concept. The drives come in packs of four. The pack and the drive cases are made of recycled paper, and perforations make it easy to tear a drive off the pack. The only difference is that the concept called for a plastic-free product, but Kurt and his partners eventually decided to add a plastic carrier to Gigs 2 Go. That’s because the drive they’re using is so thin that it won’t fit snugly into a USB port on its own. At least the carrier is made of recycled plastic.
Pledge at least $30 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a pack of 2GB Gigs 2 Go drives as a reward. You can also get 4GB and 8GB packs with larger pledges.
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